VEQ launches Connect With Your City Guide and Tell me a Story

Juanita Craig (centre) is surrounded by some of the contributors to the Tell Me a Story/Raconte-moi une Histoire bilingual children’s book and the Connect With Your City Guide, which were launched at the VEQ Spring Fling held at Les 3 Brasseurs pub in Place Ste-Foy last week.

Spring is in bloom and so too are the two completed book projects that the Voice of English-speaking Québec (VEQ) co-ordinated over the past year.

The Tell me a Story/Raconte-moi une histoire project promoted the importance of linguistic duality within the English- and French-speaking communities in the greater Quebec City region.

This was achieved by offering 12 free language exchange workshops to the general public from June to November 2017. The workshops brought the English and French-speaking communities together, with the task of creating a series of bilingual stories for children. A total of 13 stories were created at the workshops before being illustrated by students at Quebec High School.

Writers from Algeria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Costa Rica, France, Indonesia, Iran, Madagascar, Morocco, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States contributed to the book.

While Tell me a Story/Raconte-moi une histoire was about bringing two linguistic communities together, the focus of the Connect with your City Guide was on preserving and promoting links between the members of the English-speaking community in the greater Quebec City region.

Increasing community members’ awareness of the historical and cultural contribution that English speakers have had in this region will ideally result in a stronger sense of belonging to our community and city. Feeling connected is important to all community members, regardless of their age or how long they have lived in Quebec City.

VEQ hopes the Connect with your City Guide will contribute to the long-term development of the English-speaking community. By offering young people and newcomers more opportunities to share and discover the rich heritage and history of our community, we aim to encourage their commitment and connection to it.

The project focused on inviting community members to share a place of significance to them in the greater Quebec City region. Those 153 places and events were collated and researched by Quebec High School students and VEQ staff.

Both books became available to the public at the official launch, held at VEQ’s Spring Fling on March 28 at Les 3 Brasseurs at Place Ste-Foy.
Thank you to all community members who participated in the two projects.

These projects are proudly brought to you by VEQ and generously funded by Canadian Heritage.

Free hard copies of the books may be picked up at the VEQ office, Suite 2141 in the Jeffery Hale Pavilion, 1270 Chemin Sainte-Foy; visit our website veq.ca for the electronic versions.